Four film genres wander lost and thirsty in the desert when they stumble upon the ultimate salvation of their thirst - an ice cold Coke. Is it a Mirage? A real bottle of delicious Coke? And who will be the first to reach it?

It was a grueling shoot on two locations outside of Cape Town with the desert being used for the wide vistas -"I was as dry as Lawrence's flip flop!" exclaims Shoot Supervisor Phil Crowe - but the crew quickly discovered that they were unable to drive their vehicles over the dunes, forcing the team to set up at a second location in a sand quarry. "The challenges became apparent as the shoot progressed, aside from comps and split screens for timings of the action, the biggest being how to make the quarry look like the desert," explains Phil.

"I would say that trying to execute this spot was akin to building a sandcastle too close to the water's edge," shares 2D Lead Artist Tim Bird. "Many hours were spent developing a fantastic yet real world in which the Coke Mirage bottle could live. The brief was to make it Magic and Fantastic and Majestic, yet real enough that you could reach out, grab it and drink it."

"Our difficulties were nailing down the concepts for the desert and the sign," explains 3D Lead Artist David Hackett. "The desert went through a few changes from soft almost featureless dunes to what we called "architectural" dunes with defined sides and shadows. From there we extended the desert into the distance, playing with scale and atmosphere. In the end we ended up with a four layers of space made up of a hybrid of desert and dunes with some rocky mountains, or heat haze, in the distance."

"The Importance of the job dictated many top level and well respected opinions from both the agency and client," adds Tim. "Consequently several high tides did sweep away some perfectly good sandcastles, but once we built the last one far enough away from the waves, a universal consensus was reached"

The fun spot included extensive use of matte paintings, 3D projections, 2D atmospheric elements and the trusty Heat Haze plugin - all resulting in a very exciting Coca-Cola competition. Thirst has never looked so fun!